Decepticon Interim: Repairing Dead End

[Dead End]

Dead End seems to be distracted; he sighs wearily, then falls silent. After some time, he sighs again.

"Oh dear. I've rather upset Starscream. He's probably going to come here and kill me very painfully. I'm sorry if I've spoiled all that good work you just did," Dead End says sadly.

[Hook]

Starscream would have to disable Hook first, and the Constructicon doubts that the Air Commander will think of that before the first time he tries to kill someone Hook tolerates.

Hook does, however, take out a power screwdriver and lays it off to the side. "I'll keep that in mind."

[Demolishor]

Since Hook doesn't have enough things to be irritated at, Demolishor comes tromping over to see him. He doesn't say anything yet, just stands in the background with his hands at his sides, swaying slightly and hoping to get noticed.

[Dead End]

After Hook fastens the last of Dead End's plating back down, Dead End flexes his legs and spins the tires experimentally. Satisfied that the joints and pistons and cables are at least hooked up, he slides off the bier and stands up.

"Holds weight..." He transforms into his Porsche alt-mode and back again. "Transform is smooth. I'll roadtest it after you get done with Demolishor here."

[private to Demolishor]: // Demolishor, next time you protect someone, perhaps it would be sufficient to just give them cover from return fire and covering fire for their position. Hook is a Decepticon--he fights as well as builds, and was quite annoyed that I gave orders that caused you to take him out of the fight. My fault for being over-anxious about our best engineer, really--you acted per my orders quite admirably. // Dead End's tone is faintly apologetic; there's no rancor or condemnation aimed at Demolishor by him.

[Hook]

Hook half-turns to look at the tank, taking in the damages that the Insecticlones did to him. Fortunately, this didn't look like it would take long.

"Demolishor," Hook acknowledges, with all the warmth and friendliness he usually reserves for people like Sunstreaker.

[Demolishor]

Demolishor shifts uncomfortably. //Well, you said to protect him and then to retreat and I kinda put the two together. Made sense at the time, anyway.//

He waves nervously at Hook. "Hey. Sorry about the whole yanking you off the battlefield thing, I was just following orders." He rubs the back of his head and looks off to the side for a moment.

"But when you got a minute I wanna show you something."

[Dead End]

Dead End steps back and to one side, watching.

// It's all right, though Hook may have a word or two for you. //

[Hook]

"Show me what exactly?"

[Demolishor]

"This."

And Demolishor focused on warping again. The world blurred and grew fuzzy for a moment as he lingered between here and not-there, and the small wounds he'd gotten from the Insecticlones stopped aching. He wasn't so much translucent as it looked like someone had taken a picture of him, then smeared their thumb across it to blurr the image.

The process didn't take him by as much of a surprise this time, and he found himself able to wiggle a few of his fingers before his warp circuitry gave up and sent him back to where he came from. Demolishor's optics flickered as he reoriented himself his surroundings and he shook his head slightly.

[Dead End]

Dead End tilts his head slightly. "That's different."

[Hook]

Well, that was... less than helpful. Interesting, yes, but as Hook had no idea what Demolishor was or was not trying to do, or even if that was typical or not.

"I assume that is not a normal response, given that you've brought it to me for examination. What, then, were you trying to accomplish, and what would be a typical response?"

[Demolishor]

Demolishor frowns, wondering why Hook is not impressed by the strange flashy thing. Picky, picky engineers.

"I'm trying to warp back to the base, except the base kinda isn't there so I just go between for a while. It happened by accident when we were fighting and the shots just--" And he makes a motion as of something going through his torso. "Went through through me like I was there. Nobody else mentioned they had warp troubles so I figured I should tell you about it."

[Dead End]

"Warp back to base?" Dead End's visor brightens slightly. "You have some sort of teleport system that you all use, in your universe?"

Oh, now, this is interesting! Hopefully Starscream doesn't come and kill him until after he's learned about this mystery.

[Hook]

Being impressed is for after you've solved whatever life-threatening problem that has just been presented to you. After all, standing in awe at how mangled someone was stood a good chance of killing them.

That was why 'being impressed with someone else's stupidity' was one of the weapons in his skillset.

Make no mistake, Demolishor's report that he is trying to 'warp back' to something that isn't there has elevated this to a potentially life-threatening problem. Hook is well-aware of the kinds of stresses that it puts on a system to repeatedly force it to do something it literally isn't capable of. Add that to his understanding of interplanetary spacewarp technology and what it does to a person in order to translate them from one planet to another...

Well, a person who was even mildly fond of Demolishor would be displaying concern right about now.

"I will need to examine your systems," Hook says mildly.

[Demolishor]

"Yeah." Demolishor turns confusedly to Dead End. "You guys don't? How do you get back to base after your battle?" In his universe, there's no such thing as driving to the North Pole.

And back to Hook with a shrug. "Sure, but you won't find anything wrong in there. It's all doing what it's supposed to, it's just got nothing at the other end to latch on to."

Demolishor might have been able to put it in technical terms if he sat down and thought about it, but something this delicate wasn't his area of expertise. Quantam boogams or something like that, Demolishor just knows how to make it work.